Here's to endings and to beginnings.  To memories happy, sad, and everything in between, and to starting over and "newness."  A toast to what was and is "special" and to life in all its various happy surprises.  To moving on and not forgetting...to all of this, I raise a glass...

Here, here...

Silly & DORKY deep thought for the day:

Have you ever played Settlers of Catan?  Well, I think doing well in that game illustrates in some ways how to do well in life.  Let me explain.  I think the number one strategy for success in Settlers is picking a strategy and sticking with it.  So many times I've watched people decide and re-decide on what they're going to do in that game.  Those people almost never win.  They expend too much energy in too many different places.  The people who win more often are those whose actions are deliberate and purposeful, whose actions fit in a context of a plan they understand.  In many ways, you have to be deliberate and purposeful in life as well.  You have to realize the "plan," and make actions accordingly.  This goes for your career, relationships, whatever. 

Hey, I never said I was a Yoda!  Don't slam me for my dorkishness.

By the way...Star Wars III rocks...I think it's the best of the epic...supa cool!     

I'm going to start going back to church...it's been so long...and I have been caught up in numerous other things for sure...I somehow now realize that one of the great challenges if not the greatest challenge of medical school is staying who you are...it's strange, huh...that it can be hard to stay who you were before you came into something...but that's how I feel...I don't think it's really any different for any one else in medical school or in the medical field...and I don't think it's different for people in other fields either...our views are being shaped daily by ourselves and by those around us...we enter things one way, and often leave things another way, for better or worse...it really is up to us to guard our hearts and our minds because if we don't, we will become a person we don't know very well...my professor, at the end of one of this year's courses told us that the biggest challenge we face as doctors is not about knowing the disease or the treatment protocol, but in knowing and not forgetting who we are...

Funny how things change...and so fast...I am about totake my last test of the first two years of medical school...strange, huh...seeing that I read my xanga entries from the beginning of med school a few days ago, a lot has changed...I have changed...a lot...in any case, I can't believe we're actually done with the class room phase of our education...maybe this is melodramatic...most likely it is...but I think at the end of things there's always some thinking about whatever it is that ended...there's thinking, maybe some anticipation/excitement about that next thing to come, and then there's some sadness/depression about what's being left behind...I think I'm more in the sadness/depression phase...the negative phase or whatever...I remember a lot of talks with a friend of mine whose now in residency...she use to tell me how cynical medicine had made her...and then some other friends of mine who knew her told me how she really had changed...that she was more cynical...I always took that approach more as a joke...but I can see now...in a lot of ways...I think I'm more cynical...about people, about life...and in many ways, about myself...maybe it's cuz I'm tired...maybe that's it...I just need some time away and this feeling will go away...most likely that's it...but part of me really doesn't care right now...about anything...about school, about people, about life, whatever...obviously it's not THAT bad...but part of me wants to say I don't give a flip...anyways, whatever...it's a phase...tonight, I'm going to enjoy myself with my classmates...and tomorrow I'll wake up maybe a little bit better, and probably still cynical about the grind...go as you go...